


Inferno, Purgatorio

by sobrecogimiento



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobrecogimiento/pseuds/sobrecogimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>coda for 6.22. Sam may have found a solution, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inferno, Purgatorio

**Author's Note:**

> There are some descriptions of violence/torture, but nothing worse than what actually happens in canon.

Castiel demands that they profess their love unto him, their new God, and Dean hesitates, eyeing Bobby in his peripheral vision, warring with the same choice. He doesn’t want to die, not again, not now, not when he isn’t sure where they’ll go, but he doesn’t want to accept what Cas has done and become, most probably something worse than anything they’ve ever hunted. He’s scared of him, he thinks. And even when he’d barely known him, even when the angel had threatened to throw him back in the Pit, he’d never felt this type of bone-deep horror. He can’t accept that this has happened to his friend.

As it turns out, Sam is the first to kneel, or squat, more like, palms lain out flat on the dirty concrete floor, and Castiel smiles, chillingly, a parody of an expression once warm and genuine, but then the murmuring starts, and his smile falters. The ground shakes in time in minuscule earthquake tremors, increasing as the noise gets louder, and with a sudden, nauseous shock, Dean realises that it’s coming from his brother. Sam is murmuring the same thing over and over, low and guttural, in a language that make the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, despite the fact that he doesn’t recognise it. He highly doubts it would help if he did.

Wrath clouding his features, Castiel attempts to step forward and then stops as if he’s hit a wall. For the first time he looks lost, confused, terrified. His eyes are fixed on Sam, the other two humans seemingly forgotten.

The floor around Sam bubbles red, and Dean’s seen that before, that same dark, blood-and-fire colour from that demon-blood stint when his brother was performing exorcisms with his mind. It doesn’t look like he’s trying that now, though; it looks like he’s taking in rather than sending back. Bright, crimson lines travel up the veins in his hands and disappear behind his shirt sleeves, appear moments later on his neck, climbing up to his hairline. The murmuring, the incantation, reaches a near deafening crescendo and dust from the high ceiling cascades around them, and then abruptly stops.

Sam rises, and Castiel falls. Hands and knees on the concrete, coughing and choking up blood, and fuck, Dean’s earlier fear is nothing compared to what he’s feeling now. If the angel blade hadn’t even made a scratch, he doesn’t want to know what Sam’s taken in to subdue him. He wants to stop this, to reach out, save them both, his brother especially, but he’s frozen in place, can hardly breathe, much less move. He’s stuck waiting, hoping against all hope this isn’t going half as far south as it looks.

Power crackles around Sam like a lightning storm, like a tempest, a huge, lethal force of nature. His eyes are closed, veins still glowing faintly, so it takes a moment for Dean to notice the brightly lit object dangling from a cord wound tightly around his left hand.

It’s the fucking amulet.

He didn’t want to recognise it, denial being a drug of choice, but it hits him all at once and he isn’t sure if he really wants to laugh, cry, or puke. For a second, Dean forgets the life-threatening showdown between a self-made God and whatever Sam has become, and he wants to ask him where he got it, how long he’s had it, but the truth is, he knows. Sam must have fished it out of the trash after Dean tossed it, must have kept it ever since—in hell, when he was soulless, the entire goddamn time. And it wasn’t for this purpose, whatever this is; he knows that, too. It was because of what it meant to him, what it means to them. He just hopes he’ll get the chance to say sorry.

At the moment, there are more pressing matters, because Sam speaks in a deep, rumbling voice that somehow still sounds like his own, says, “Return the souls to purgatory, Castiel,” and opens his eyes.

Dean thinks he could have handled it if Sam’s eyes were black—at least he’s pretty sure he could have—but they’re bone and ivory white, completely rolled back into his skull. He must have taken in something extremely powerful, something on the level of Lilith and Alistair, and even if he does fix Cas, Dean doesn’t know if they’ll be able to fix him.

“And if I refuse?” Castiel grates out thickly, blood dripping in a steady stream into the growing puddle on the floor.

Sam smiles like ice and fire, liquid nitrogen burns. “Then,” he says softly, “I’ll just have to torture you until you obey.”

He raises the hand that’s holding the amulet, fist clenching around it tightly. Castiel screams and collapses facedown into a pile of his own blood and mucous, and lays there, whimpering quietly. Dean averts his gaze, the action as instinctive as his sharp, sudden intake of breath.

Sam must have heard him because the atmosphere shifts ever-so-slightly towards the less power-laden and intense, and Castiel stills, breath laboured. “Dean, it’s ok,” Sam tells him without looking away from the former angel, and for a minute, he doesn’t sound like anything except himself. “I promise, it’s all gonna be ok.”

But it’s a lie, an empty promise, because Dean breaks with the next thing he says, with the revelation that there’s nothing to fix, nothing to save. Sam tightens his grasp and Castiel screams again, writhing on the floor.

“You know, Castiel,” he says conversationally, almost flippantly, “making me remember hell was probably the dumbest thing you ever did.”

~End

**Author's Note:**

> I sort of wrote this in less than an hour, so I'm not entirely sure I have much more an idea of what's going on with Sam than anyone who may be reading this. His having the amulet has something to do with his ability to torture/control Castiel, but damned if I know how. Dean wants to think that Sam's possessed, but at the end, he realises it's just him in there, and that either by ritual or nature, hell has made Sam strong and knowledgeable enough to take on Cas and win. Also, I just love Sam's demon!Jesus powers, in case you couldn't tell.


End file.
